Quicksilver Alliances
by Spyridon
Summary: COMPLETE: Excessive sweating was not normal. She had only completed part of her residency but Mia had been the top student of her class at UCLA. She knew there were several reasons for overstimulated sweat glands yet one stood out among all the others.


**Title:** Quicksilver Alliances  
**Status:** Complete  
**Pairings:** Brian O'Conner/Mia Toretto, mention of Dominic Toretto/Elena Neves  
**Additional Categories:** One-shot  
**Genre:** Adventure,  
**Season/Episodes:** Takes place between Fast Five and Fast and Furious 6  
**Rating:** Teen  
**Warnings:** Language  
**Spoilers:** Basic Plot of Fast 6.  
**Summary:** Excessive sweating was not normal. She had only completed part of her residency but Mia knew there were several reasons for overstimulated sweat glands yet one stood out.  
**Series/Sequels:** N/A  
**Last Updated:** April 6, 2013  
**Author's Notes:** I don't know what the crew was thinking but making Johnson look the way he did in the movie was just nasty. Here's my explanation of why Dom was dripping sweat everywhere. REVIEWS WOULD GREATLY BE APPRECIATED!

* * *

_**Quicksilver Alliances**_

* * *

Being eight months pregnant was certainly taking its toll on Mia O'Conner physically, emotionally, and mentally. The doctor had told her that she should be in bed resting as the pregnancy was difficult due to the stresses in her life. She snorted; it wasn't like every pregnant woman was on the run from US authorities after breaking out their brother from federal custody. They then didn't help in a multimillion dollar heist against a major kingpin in Brazil after running across the rooftops of the slums with AK-47-wielding _pendejos_ and evading a federal agent who had taken a personal interest in said brother while losing someone who was practically her brother. Yeah, her life was practically stress-free.

The screen door to their house opened, her husband of a few weeks walking out with two large iced teas and a bowl of sorted fresh fruit.

Thanks to the heist, Brian didn't have to work and he spent the time either working on the new GTR he bought or hovering over Mia which annoyed her. Secretly, though, she loved the attention. She just didn't tell Brian that as she could see the male pride swelling in his chest as the months passed and her stomach began to swell. Nope, she was not going to inflate his male ego even more.

Mia hummed in content as Brian slid behind her after placing the tray in reach on the glass table, pulling on her until she was half-laying on his chest. "I was thinking of Daniel for a boy and Maria for a girl." She sad, snuggling into the embrace Brian offered from the painful memories. The sound of the waves and the cawing of the native birds was the perfect back drop. The salty smell of the ocean drifted on the light breeze, its touch cool enough to keep the warm sun from burning them.

Brian scrunched his nose at the suggestions. "I was thinking more of Isabel for a girl and Wesley for a boy."

Opening one eye, Mia gazed at him. "Wesley? Are you serious?"

"Well, those are more Rome's suggestions than mine since I wasn't sure about what I came up with." Brian admitted. "I think he was watching the Blade series at the time when I was asking him."

"I am not naming my son after an actor who is known for playing a vampire hunter." Mia stated firmly. "What were _your_ second choices, ones that you actually came up with?"

"Vincent Jesse." Brian whispered softly, knowing the former name was still a sore sport with Mia and Dom. Losing Vince had affected them strongly as it reopened the wounds left after Letty's and Jesse's death. Having to lose someone that you knew since you were 9 years old was something that Brian couldn't even imagine. The closest example would be for Brian to lose Rome and he had only known them for about ten years.

Mia's hands tightened around Brian's arms, the only outward sign of her emotional distress. "V."

"I thought it was appropriate since he did save your life down in Brazil. Since he's dead, I thought it would be immature of me to keep holding a grudge against him." Brian tried to explain his choice of a name. "He did save you when you were in the market with Reyes' goons after you and I was at the hideout instead of watching you-"

"What if it's a girl?" Mia interrupted his babbling.

"Jessica Vincenza." Brian answered with hesitation, stumbling slightly over the middle name. He had to look up the female version of Vincent and Vincenza was the closest.

"You've really thought about this."

"Well, Nico needs a V watching his back though probably considering he or she is our kid, Nico will probably get in trouble a lot."

"And what if he needs a Brian?"

"Well, if Dom ever has a son, maybe he could name the kid." Her husband joked lightly.

Mia paused, trying to bring up an image of Dom having a son with Elena. Despite her best efforts, she could not but she could see an image of a male child with Letty's features and Dom's build, flames roaring up his small child boots, wearing a child version of Dom's leather jacket. Pushing the thought away, knowing it wouldn't come true, Mia sat up on Brian's chest, looking down at him with a bemused expression. "You've really thought about this, haven't you? One would think you're softening with old age." She patted his still firm stomach.

Brian growled, dragging her down, taking her lips with his own, careful of the large swell of hers stomach. "I'm not getting soft." He said, wrapping his hand around her wrists.

Mia gave him a smirk, thrusting lightly against him. "I can definitely feel that." She wasn't joking. Since she was chained to bed rest, their nighttime activities had dropped to near zero. She had noticed that Brian's showers had increased in length. Mia would have felt sorry for him but it was those same activities while they were running that had put them into this predicament. Not that she regretted it for a moment. It was just that she wished it would have happened when they had settled down.

Brian groaned deep in his throat. He crushed her lips with his, showing her what she wanted to do to her body with his mouth. After a few minutes, he broke the kiss, nipping at her bottom lip. "Don't tease." He stretched out along the seat, throwing an arm over his face as he tried to calm his raging body down.

"Sorry baby, just three more months." Mia said, stroking his flank. "Then we can go back to driving my brother up the wall."

Brian lifted his arm just enough to pick at her with a single blue eye. "You're not sorry at all."

She laid her head on his chest, gazing back lovingly. "You're not the only one, Brian, but then again, you're not the one who's carrying a basketball-sized weight." She snuggled into his side again. "I like the sound of Vincent Jesse and Jessica Vincenza; VJ and Nico."

"Brian, what did you think of Hobbs?"

"Huh, where did that question come from?" Brian lifted his arm completely to gaze at her with confusion. "And when did Hobbs creep into our daily conversations?"

"It's just that I've been wondering about his condition?"

"Mean ugly ass brute that has a weird fixation on your brother? And let's not forget he could be the spokesperson for Old Spice" The air fled Brian as Mia punched him in the chest. "Okay, okay. What about him?"

"Even for a man, Hobbs was sweating excessively and he seemed to suffer from hypertension."

Brian smirked. "I really don't think Dom and I were helping in that regard with destroying half of Rio during the heist."

"Brian, I'm being serious. The physical conditions he was presenting were not normal for a person. The excessive sweating, hypertension, irritability, the fast heart rate, increased salivation, skin discoloration, and the desquamation on his elbows have been worrying at the back of my mind." Mia began listing the physical problems the federal agent was presenting. She even had a close up when they were in that mini tank of his.

"Desquamation?" Brian echoed, unfamiliar with the word.

"Medical term for the shedding of the skin."

"Okay and what does all that mean?"

"I think someone is trying to poison Hobbs with mercury." Fuck, Brian should have listened to his instincts to sleep in.

* * *

Lucas Hobbs was sitting in his office, glaring at the last reports of the Toretto crew. All of them were when the team had left Rio de Janeiro after the heist. After that, there was nothing except the occasional rumor which turned up to be nothing. Due to the heist, the legend surrounding Toretto and O'Conner had only grown, becoming something of folk heroes in the eyes of the underground racing scenes. He growled low in his throat at the thought of O'Conner. The man was nothing to look up to, breaking two oaths he had sworn, sleeping with the enemy, and joining the target he should have brought in. Traitorous scum. It would be a pleasure to have O'Conner thrown into jail and locked away.

The latest lead had stated Toretto to be in Spain. If that was true, Hobbs would have to be boarding a plane soon to check out the lead himself. With the death of his entire crew to apprehend them, this mission had become personal.

His musings was broken by the sound of his cellphone ringing. Without looking at the screen, Hobbs flipped it open.

"Hobbs."

"Hey, bro." The smile in the voice had Hobbs straightening in his chair, hand reflexively tightening into a fist. He preferred his fingers to be closing around the man's throat instead.

"O'Conner, I didn't think you'd be begging to get back into handcuffs after Brazil." Hobbs growled out, irked at the audacity of the man to call him when Hobbs would do anything to throw his ass in the jail.

"Well, I never thought I would actually have a reason to call you." O'Conner's voice was easy, smooth. It just served to annoy Hobbs even more. Maybe the dentist was right; with all the teeth grinding he had been doing since the Rio job, the dentist had told Hobbs he would be needing a mouth guard at night to prevent further enamel loss on his molars.

"What was so important that you risked your freedom to call me?" The moment he recognized the disgraced federal agent's voice, he had snapped his fingers at his new team to begin tracing the call.

"You know Mia's background and that she was near completing her residency after graduating near the top of her class from UCLA. She couldn't help but notice that you were excessively sweating without an apparent reason. It's been bugging her so much she decided to research it. She wants to know if you've been feeling pain, itching, or burning sensations in your extremities or if you had any skin discoloration along your fingertips or toes? Swelling of the body? Or if you've just been shedding skin randomly? Unexplained hypertension or tachycardia that your doctor can't explain?" O'Conner shot off the questions in quick succession, knowing that they were tracing the call.

Hobbs sat straighter in his chair, his jaw tightening until he was sure that one of his teeth would crack. Over the past months, even before the Toretto case, Hobbs had been not feeling well. He had just chalked it off as years of grinding work that was finally taking its toll on his body. The check-ups at the doctors hadn't yielded anything so he had brushed it off and threw himself into his work. A few of his colleagues had noticed that his already short temper was now explosive. Maybe it could be the continuing burning sensation he had along his legs and lower back. He had to buy the highest quality of deodorants as the sweating was beginning to get out of hand. "What are you trying to say, O'Conner?" One of the new agents signaled to him they had trouble tracing the call; no doubt O'Conner was using what he had learned in the academy to block them.

"Mia thinks someone is trying to poison you. With mercury." Came the quick reply.

"You're bull-shitting me, O'Conner." It could just be an attempt to have the federal agent thrown off his family's tracks.

"If it isn't, do you really want to gamble with that chance? Or are you just afraid that it's true?"

"And exactly who do you think would be trying to poison me?"

"That's something you need to ask yourself. I'm sure you're the type of agent that would piss off a number of people because of the high road you walk on. After all, the oath you swore when you took this job is sacred to you. And I'm damn sure there a couple agents there that don't want you to sniff around their business. I suggest going to a doctor that you can really trust." The line went dead.

Pulling the phone from his ear, Hobbs looked at the receiver, wondering what his next move would be. The doctor he had been seeing was assigned to him by the department to take advantage of the benefits his service offered. Was someone in the government subtlety trying to kill him and had paid off the doctor to look the other way? The doctor that he was seeing for the medical problems was a new one that had been assigned to him eight months ago, before the symptoms had begun to appear.

"Sorry, boss. O'Conner forced the signals to bounce every time we got a lock on it and that was after we had to figure out the signal."

Hobbs waved the explanation away. "Get back to work and look over the clues they left behind. There is something you might have missed." The attitude of the new group was annoying him tremendously. For every little cock up, they apologized profusely while they could have been focusing on the next report. His old crew would have just shrugged and moved on.

The federal agent eyed the area outside of the glass panes that surrounded his office, eyeing the other agents that were working on other cases for DSS.

Was one of them really trying to bring him down?

Despite his best efforts, his mind could not get rid of what O'Conner said to him: _If it isn't, do you really want to gamble with that chance? Or are you just afraid that it's true?_

Was he afraid that one of his colleagues was a traitor? That he was being poisoned by someone he worked with every day? Was there someone out here, in the very building Hobbs was sitting in that wanted him dead? The attitude he had regarding his jobs had enamored him with a number of his bosses while isolating the rest. He followed the law to the letter while bending others at the same time. It was something he prided himself on and why he was so at odds with criminals like O'Conner, former law enforcement officers who had turned their back on the oaths they swore.

There had been that case before Toretto's that had drawn the attention of him and his crew. They had turned it over to another team for follow ups while they went down to chase Toretto and O'Conner. He hadn't heard from anything since then.

His men had been murdered.

Had that been the plan?

He had only survived because Toretto had come for him.

Names were pulled from his consciousness, names that were achingly familiar.

_That's something you need to ask yourself. I'm sure you're the type of agent that would piss off a number of people because of the high road you walk on. . . And I'm damn sure there a couple agents there that don't want you to sniff around their business._

Yeah there were times that he hated O'Conner.

* * *

A couple of days later, Hobbs was sitting in the home of the doctor that had seen his family for years.

"Are you sure you want this?" Doctor James Warrick said, shuffling over to where Hobbs was sitting at his dinner table. The windows looking out into the front garden were covered with thick drapes to prevent people from looking in. He carefully placed the kit he had taken from the labs at the National Institutes of Health.

"You're the only I can trust. I can't trust any of the doctors that are on the DSS payroll and you have the necessary equipment at the NIH." Hobbs said as he began to roll up his sleeve.

Dr. Warrick began prepping the arm. "And what happens if the tests come back positive?"

"You're going to have to make sure that the results aren't lost along with the blood samples. Considering how many samples you have in your lab, it wouldn't be hard for one of your staff to swap out the samples."

The needle slipped in effortlessly and the bright red blood began to fill the first vacutainer. Warrick switched the tubes once the first one was full. When the last one was filled, he placed them into the ice box he had brought from his lab. On the front was a cover that had the information of a research project he was heading. The sample number was 666. The arm was cleaned and patched with a skin-colored band aid.

"How do you want me to contact you?"

"At this number. It's not my work phone." Hobbs handed him a small card after pulling the sleeve down. "Believe me; I want my hunch to be wrong."

Three days later, he got the email from Warrick.

* * *

By the time Hobbs made to his single story home, the sun had come and gone. The streets were empty, families tucked into their beds, the occasional dog barking from the backyard. A street over, a single police cruiser turned, disappearing into the darkness. The lack of movement and still night allowed Hobbs to search around him for anything that might be out of place; a van that normally wasn't there, an unknown sedan parked into a usually empty driveway.

Hidden under his jacket was a portable mercury vapor indicator device, smuggled from within the DSS. He had managed to sneak it past the clerk who recorded the comings and goings of the DSS equipment.

There were two places that he visited on any regular basis; his home and work.

If there was any time that would allow someone to poison him on a continual basis, it would be at one of these two locations. Poisoning him at work would be too risky and had a high chance of unwanted attention when a number of agents would eventually fall sick with the same symptoms Hobbs was experiencing himself.

Before opening the front door, Hobbs eyed the door jambs and knob, searching for any scratch or nick that hadn't been there before. Due to his training, he kept the edges of points of entry into his house smooth. There was nothing out of the ordinary on the sanded wood. He quickly opened the solid oak door and entered his house. Again, nothing came to him that screamed that someone had been inside his house. Pulling the indicator from his jacket, Hobbs turned it on.

The screen immediately began to detect mercury vapor in the air.

Hobbs' lips tightened as his mind registered that O'Conner had been right. Pushing to the back of his mind now, he began a thorough search of his home. The living room only had trace amounts. The kitchen, the master bedroom, and the master bathroom all had high levels of mercury vapor present. Shutting off the device, Hobbs repressed the urge to throw the device at the wall.

The evidence was irrefutable; someone had been trying to murder him and right under his own nose. The only thing that had saved him was the fact that it had been from the mouth of someone he had been chasing. The thought that he owed O'Conner a debt was a sour, bitter taste in his mouth. It might have been the mercury fucking with his taste buds but he knew he couldn't quite stomach of owing the former federal agent a debt. If it had been Toretto, it wouldn't have been as bad. At least he had some honor.

Hand tightening around the device, Hobbs began to plan how to prove that a federal agent had been poisoning him.

* * *

The shrill ringing of the phone woke up Brian, the former cop wildly swinging his long arm around to pick it up before it woke up the baby. It had taken forever to put the new addition down and Mia would not be happy to have him wake up wailing at having his sleep interrupted.

"ello?" He asked groggily, his brain refusing to wake up completely. It didn't help that he had only gotten four hours of sleep last night and not all in one go. Mia had the worst of it, choosing to breast feed their newborn son to give him a head start in life.

"Brian, turn on the TV." Dom's voice came over the speaker.

"What?" Yup, his brain had given up on him.

"TV, on, now."

Groaning, Brian slipped from the warm comfort of Mia's body and rolled to his feet, almost smashing head first into the floor. "What's going on?"

"Something that you would want to see."

Down in the living room, Brian reached for the remote and turned on the TV, quickly muting the sound. "What channel?" Thanks to the money, he could afford the English version of the news channels.

"CNN."

The network came on, the reporter talking to the anchor. What Brian saw on the screen had him straightening up and staring in shock at the words rolling across the bottom of the screen: DIRECTOR OF FBI ARRESTED FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER OF AGENT. "What the fuck?"

"Didn't you know that punk?"

"No, I worked for Agent Penning and he's not the Director of the FBI, only the LA Office. Did they state who he attempted to murder?" The words in his mouth were thick, his brain definitely beginning to wake up as the adrenaline pumped through his veins. Slowly, the gears were grinding together and adding up the numbers.

"They don't say on the networks but Tej was able to check it out and he confirmed that Hobbs was the one the director was after."

"You're bullshitting me." His stomach twisted at his words. An omission was still a lie and he had promised that he wouldn't lie to Dom anymore.

"No, mercury poisoning. It seems that the director was doing unsavory conducts underneath the table and the DSS had been paired with the Secret Service to investigate what was going on. Hobbs was the lead for the DSS and was getting close to figuring it out. Fortunately or unfortunately, our case was slapped on the DSS desk from the FBI and Hobbs lost his entire team in Rio."

"That's too convenient."

"Do you think that Hobbs will still be on our trail?"

"Yeah, once he gets healthy he'll be back on our ass."

"Damn, the guy's a pit bull."

A small sad smile crossed Brian's face as he stared at the TV which was now showing the former director being led away in handcuffs. "Sounds like someone we used to know."

"How's VJ doing?"

"He's already showing the Toretto stubbornness with the O'Conner hard-headedness. Mia is already cursing at me for giving him the puppy look."

"We'll be there soon. I wasn't expecting for Mia to go into labor so soon."

Brian rubbed at his eyes. "Yeah, the doctor at the hospital told us that first time mothers usually take a little longer on the first one. He told us it was probably from the stress."

"I thought I told you to watch her."

Anger sparked inside of Brian but he quickly bit back the words he wanted to say. There wasn't going to be any good done and plus, it would only bring back memories that were better left in their pasts. "It still wasn't enough. The kid seems to have taken the bad habits of both sides of the family. Mia is already swearing me to not have the kid touch a steering wheel until he's 18."

Dom snorted over the phone. "Like that's going to happen. I'll call when we get on the plane."

"Elena's coming too?"

"Yeah, she has nothing left in Brazil for her. The chief of police is making hell for her and turning her job into a nightmare."

"I know how that feels. I'll tell Mia that you called."

"Don't tell her about Hobbs. I don't want her stressing more than what she needs." Dom hung up as Brian rolled his eyes.

"Who was that?" Brian looked up to see Mia standing at the door, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"Your brother."

"Why is he calling here at 2 in the morning?" Brian turned his head toward the TV where the report was still going on. Mia's hand dropped as she read the headlines. Dom never told him not to stop her from finding out on her own and considering that Mia was the one that brought it up in the first place, he wasn't going to keep that a secret. Otherwise she would probably be handing him balls for keeping another thing a secret.

"So I was right?" Mia moved until she slid into his arms, eyes glued to the screen.

"Yup, baby, you were right. The director was trying to get rid of Hobbs for sneaking around in his business. Hobbs has probably already been treated for the poisoning."

"Which means he'll be back on our trail." Mia stated sadly. "Maybe I should have kept it to myself."

Brian turned Mia around to face him, his face serious. "That wouldn't be like you, Mia. You believed in that oath that you would have taken; first do no harm. If you had kept it to yourself, the guilt would have eaten away at you. You felt you had to do something right even though you knew the consequences of doing so would be against you." He kissed her forehead. "It's one of the things why I love you."

"I only hope that I don't live to regret it."

* * *

A few weeks later and a full recovery, Hobbs looked at the leaders of the crew standing opposite of him and his team. "I'm offering you a chance to make your family whole again." His superiors had been against the idea of bringing Toretto's crew into the operation but Hobbs knew that his fledgling team was out of Shaw's league. The only person he knew was capable of going toe to toe with the former Spec Ops soldier was Toretto's team.

O'Conner's blue eyes locked eyes with him. "You get us close to Letty and we'll get you Shaw. AND you give us full pardons, all the way around." Hobbs knew they would have O'Conner take the lead on this as he knew the ways around the law enforcement procedure. Any attempt to blindside them would have them going to ground, something that he wasn't willing to risk, not with so much destruction and death on the line.

He knew of the deal O'Conner had made with the FBI regarding Dom's capture and how the agency had turned their back on their own agent. Their move had humiliated them when said agent had not only turned back on his oath but bitten their balls off when he and his girlfriend had successfully broken Toretto from the bus and made off.

Hobbs knew they would do it again. "I can't promise you that." His superiors at the DSS were chomping to throw O'Conner and the Torettos away, never mind that would leave a newborn baby without his parents.

"That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

Hobbs stared across the table, eyeing the crew until they stopped once more on O'Conner's face. Even though than the man did not say it, Hobbs knew he owed a debt to Toretto's sister for diagnosing him and helping him find out who had tried to kill him. If it hadn't been for her, he would have gone on, never knowing that he was slowly being poisoned by the former FBI director. He owed them another chance at a normal life. "I'll see what I can do but I can't promise you more than that."

Toretto must have sensed his sincerity and nodded. "Then we're going to need to go shopping."

As the team and the crew began to put their heads together to figure out a plan to stop the international criminal, Hobbs saw O'Conner looked at him and tilted his head in acknowledgement. He nodded back.

Yes he would give them a chance at life just as they had given him.

It was a matter of getting out of this alive.

* * *

**Spyridon: 'Quicksilver Alliances' refers to the changing relations between Brian, Dom, and Hobbs over the course of 'Fast Five' to 'Fast and Furious 6'. Plus quicksilver is another term for mercury which was the poison of choice for the corrupt agent in this story. Alliances just highlights that the crew and team have joined forces against a common foe; the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.**

**I knew CH3 of 'Unforgiving' wasn't going to be well received. I just didn't think it would be that bad to have no reviews as at all. Well, at least the story is moving forward. Updates as usual on my LJ. **


End file.
